The Choice Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

The choice


I could have been a farmer that was not a choice
the authority sent me there, I think as punishment for being rebellious.
I could have been an academic, but no one like me went to University
so choice never came up as an alternative.
I´m only conscious of a choice born out of necessity becoming a seafarer
instead of working in a factory the very idea of factory work
still can make me shudder.
I spent years at sea and was promoted as an officer,
it was not what I wanted I was a leaf in a stream with little will to alter
where life took me.
Tired of the sea I opened a cafe, not by choice, but I could be my boss
but I had not reckoned with costumers and talking to them, like a barber
who talk to his` about football which he privately hates.
For the reason that had little to do with me, I was a counselor at a clinic
telling alcoholics how to stop drinking, I think of my stint at the clinic
when I have my evening whiskey.
So my only choice in life was to sit in a library all my life read and eat
a bologna sandwich, while life was going on outside, a decision that
could not be fulfilled, I blame the women for that.